When it comes to the evaluation of the significance of the Civil War, many tend to put emphasis on the relationship between the races as well as the desire of one party, the Confederacy, to maintain the preferred social order, namely slavery. However, there is another kind of relations that is often overlooked when it comes to the analysis of this armed conflict – gender relationships. While many believe that the war in question was fought by men against men, the contribution of women tends to be in the shadow and is perceived as less significant. This is a serious historical injustice since when all aspects of that time are taken into account, one will be able to notice that women contributed to the war effort from both sides significantly. During the Civil War women provided war relief, served as nurses, soldiers, and even spies which makes them an inseparable part of that armed conflict.
Women Providing War Relief To begin with, it is worth focusing on the place that women traditionally occupied in the society in the eighteenth century. Being deprived of a chance to get education, they usually worked as manual workers and were employed at jobs of varying difficulty . It is obvious that wives
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Given all the roles that were mentioned above, namely a war relief worker, a nurse, and a soldier, one might speculate that being a spy is the most extreme role that women were able to play during the war. From the letters of Sarah E. Thompson, we know that she did her best to serve the Union as much as she could. Though she may have simply talked to some soldiers and visited balls, she was actually collecting important information that was later needed by the army . That is why it is possible that women’s ability to affect men and maintain interesting conversation appeared to be quite helpful during the